On 2 Apr 2006 22:13:52 -0700, "chadmaester" <chad.d.johnson at gmail.com>
wrote:
>Got another question for you.
>>When two events repeatedly occur together and connections are formed
>between neurons and the two events are associated with one another, how
>does the connection become "stronger" physically? Do the actual
>thicknesses of the connections change, or do more and more connections
>continually form?
This is an area of very active research. The books by Shepherd I
mentioned will have a lot of material on this but they are a few years
old, now.
Metabotropic synapses work through the action of second messengers,
factors that are freely mobile inside the cell. These pathways can
influence systems in the cell nucleus to alter the synthesis of
proteins in the cell and change it in many ways. This can include
producing more proteins involved in the activity of that synapse or
even growing the synapse larger and forming more synapses. Note:
there are signals exchanged between the two cells so that both sides
of the synapse can respond.